Let the Kids Rule High School

Susan Engel writes in an Op-Ed in the New York Times, 3/15/11:

The students in the Independent Project are remarkable but not because they are exceptionally motivated or unusually talented. They are remarkable because they demonstrate the kinds of learning and personal growth that are possible when teenagers feel ownership of their high school experience, when they learn things that matter to them and when they learn together. In such a setting, school capitalizes on rather than thwarts the intensity and engagement that teenagers usually reserve for sports, protest or friendship.

Schools everywhere could initiate an Independent Project. All it takes are serious, committed students and a supportive faculty. These projects might not be exactly alike: students might apportion their time differently, or add another discipline to the mix. But if the Independent Project students are any indication, participants will end up more accomplished, more engaged and more knowledgeable than they would have been taking regular courses.

We have tried making the school day longer and blanketing students with standardized tests. But perhaps children don’t need another reform imposed on them. Instead, they need to be the authors of their own education.

Interesting how the Independent Project is presented as a new develpment for teenage learners. However, I must note, there is a long history of independent people, alternative schools, homeschoolers and unschoolers who have been promoting making children the authors of their own education, and who have succeeded in doing so for teenagers and children of all ages.

Growing Up in a World of Information Overload

As I was working in my freelance editor/writer job today for a client I came across this interesting video that was shown at Sony's annual shareholder's meeting last year. I was struck not only by the serendipity of how the content of this video puts some amazing context to my previous post about video addiction—the rate of increase of technology in our lives is astoundingly presented in this video—but also about the meaning of technology in our adult lives. The video ends with the question, "So what does it all mean?"

To me, it means that we need to increase our human abilities to discern truth from fiction, marketing hype and political doubletalk from meaningful conversation, and to determine how all people can best use technology instead of a few people using technology to manage everyone else. After viewing this, what does it all mean to you?

On Unschooling, Parenting, and Video Addiction

The topic of video addiction came up on an unschooling list I read. I was surprised by the response given to people who, out of desperation about what to do or in reaction to their own admitted video addiction, were seeking ideas or validation for what they did. Instead, they were greeted with an unsympathetic reply largely along the lines that they were wrong to limit or deny their children unfettered access to video games, and that if there was an addiction issue it is because they weren't unschooled or they didn't do unschooling properly. Here is what I wrote:

As someone who has considerable experience in unschooling, as a friend of John Holt, publisher of Growing Without Schooling, and a father of three girls, I want to add my perspective on this discussion about video addiction.

There are no studies about whether unschooling and unfettered access to video games has a positive or negative effect on child development. However, there is considerable evidence that an unhealthy attachment to anything, be it videos, food, or getting perfect grades, can stunt emotional and physical growth and if a parent feels that such an attachment is hurting their child and seeks to do something about it they should not be banished from unschooling for doing so. If watchful waiting is no longer an option for the parents, then they should try something else and see if that helps the child and them live better together.

I support parents who decide to allow their children unfettered access to video games and I have published stories in GWS about the success of this strategy; I vividly remember one we published in the 1990s when a boy who could play videos as much as he wanted eventually decided to sell all his video games because he decided that they prevented him from spending time doing other things he wanted to do. However, I also support and published stories about parents who dealt with this issue differently, because their personalities, beliefs, and family situations are completely different, yet they, too, found a way to unschool their children. Just as one size does not fit all in school, one size does not fit all in unschooling.

Unschooling is first and foremost an educational approach. Unschooling was not created by Holt, nor propagated by my colleagues and me since Holt’s death in 1985, to be an ideological parenting method, though I think unschooling certainly informs one’s parenting. Just as we trust children to discover and learn things in their own way, so, too, can parents be trusted to figure out how unschooling will work in their family and adapt it to their relationships with each of their children. There are varieties of unschooling, such as radical unschooling, Christian unschooling, and so on, and they are all important developments for people seeking ways to learn without schooling. But the common, broader element that unites them all is the word “unschooling,” meaning we are not doing school at home with our children. That’s what unites us and makes unschooling an educational movement, as it has been since Holt coined the word in 1977. To claim that only one particular way of parenting and raising one’s children is unschooling does a disservice to Holt’s work and to all the people who are seeking, however imperfectly, to do something more meaningful with their children than schoolwork.



Some Straight Talk About College and Costs

"You can never have too much education because it is the key to economic success." I have challenged this notion for decades, following in the large footprints left on this topic by Illich, Holt, and others. However, when Paul Kruguman, a liberal op-ed writer for the NY Times and an economist writes, as he did on March 6, 2011:

The belief that education is becoming ever more important rests on the plausible-sounding notion that advances in technology increase job opportunities for those who work with information—loosely speaking, that computers help those who work with their minds, while hurting those who work with their hands.

Krugman then notes how this belief flies in the face of technological reality: "...any routine task—a category that includes many white-collar, nonmanual jobs—is in the firing line. Conversely, jobs that can't be carried out by following explicit rules—a category that includes many kinds of manual labor, from truck drivers to janitors—will tend to grow even in the face of technological progress." This is borne out by U.S. Department of Labor statistics: Among the top 10 occupations with the largest employment growth, 2008-18, only 2 require 4-year college degrees—accountants and post-secondary teachers. Overall, among the 30 jobs listed on this chart, I see just 8–10 out of the 30 jobs listed as requiring 4-year college degrees or higher.

Krugman notes how going to college is no longer a guarantee for a good job because "high-wage jobs performed by highly educated workers are, if anything, more "offshoreable" than jobs done by low-paid, less-educated workers."

The article also discusses how the middle-class is spending more and more money trying to get their children into, and graduated from, college at the same time the U.S. market for college graduates is probably shrinking. This is hardly news—in 1971 Dr. Ivar Berg's Education and Jobs: The Great Training Robbery (Beacon Press) warned about growing numbers of disgruntled college graduates who were overeducated, underpaid, and underemployed (sounds like Egypt today where 83% of college graduates are unemployed and have been well before the recent unrest)—but now that college debt has become a major source of income instability and disappointment for many it is finally being discussed in the mainstream media.

Homeschoolers and unschoolers have long questioned going to college as the primary goal of learning and perhaps now the time is emerging when our various reasons for not going, and the different paths we take to employment and learning instead of the conventional college path, will no longer be considered extreme reactions but sane responses. As Krugman notes, "So if we want a society of broadly shared prosperity, education isn't the answer—we'll have to go about building that society directly." I urge you to read Krugman's opinion piece, Degrees and Dollars, and to start a conversation with your friends and neighbors about what college is really worth today.

Correction on Spain and a Conference About Ivan Illich's Work

I have learned that though my first post about the situation in Spain was correct, my second, where I claimed homeschooling was officially illegal in Spain, is not correct. This is due to my misreading of the information I received and I apologize for any distress this may have caused anyone. The situation in Spain is that the courts did not find a constitutional basis for homeschooling to be a right that families can exercise, but the courts noted this right could be added to the constitution. Obviously this is a big task for the small number of Spanish homeschoolers to accomplish, but one that is possible. In the meantime, Spanish homeschoolers are in the gray zone of homeschooling versus government authority, a situation familiar to homeschooling veterans in the US in the 1970s and 1980s: the Spanish families I know are still homeschooling but no one knows if they will be prosecuted for doing so. Time will tell, and I hope that during that time Spanish homeschoolers are able to rally public opinion, as well as polticial and educational support, to make homeschooling a constitutionally-protected practice.

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Ivan Illich is certainly one of the most controversial philosophers and social critics of the twentieth century. His influential canon of work includes penetrating analyses of schooling (Deschooling Society), medicine, (Medical Nemesis), public policy (Energy and Equity), literacy (In the Vineyard of the Text), and so on. His influence on John Holt's thinking about school is well-documented, but like Holt, Ivan often worked, in his own words, "on the fringes of academia." I often feel that Illich's work is more appreciated in other parts of the world  than in the United States, so I was very pleasantly surprised to learn about this upcoming conference, sponsored by the Western New England College School of Law, on April 1, 2011 (I hope this is not an April Fool's joke!):

Radical Nemesis: Re-envisioning Ivan Illich's Theories on Social Institutions

I look forward to being a member of the audience for this all-day event.